Employing bifunctional enzymes for enhanced extraction of bioactives from plants: flavonoids as an example.

A cost-effective and environmentally friendly approach was developed to improve the extraction of active ingredients from plants, in which a bifunctional enzyme was employed for not only facilitating cell wall degradation but also increasing the bioactivity of target compounds in the extract. In the aqueous extraction of flavonoids from Glycyrrhizae radix, Trichoderma viride cellulase, a commercial cell-wall-degrading enzyme, was found to efficiently deglycosylate liquiritin and isoliquiritin, which are of high content but low bioactivity, into their aglycones that have much higher physiological activities for dietary and medicinal uses. Under optimized conditions, the extraction yield of liquiritigenin and isoliquiritigenin aglycones reached 4.23 and 0.39 mg/g of dry weight (dw) with 6.51- and 3.55-fold increases, respectively. The same approach was expanded to the extraction of flavonoids from Scutellariae radix using Penicillium decumbens naringinase, where enhanced production of more bioactive bacalein and wogonin was achieved via enzymatic deglycosylation of bacalin and wogonoside.